Comments on: Slidell Hurricane Blog Deleted

By: tericee

tericee — Sun, 10 May 2009 19:06:16 +0000

Now that comments are closed, it looks like even the archived comments are no long read-able. While it was acknowledged above that many of the most recent comments were spam, some of the earlier comments must have been substantive, no? Is there a setting you can change that shows old comments, but doesn’t allow new ones?

By: Weblogs Work: Social Media Consultants

Weblogs Work: Social Media Consultants — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:29:35 +0000

[...] What do we do? Are we obligated to keep it up and running forever even though Mystic Tan is not going to pay us for continued management and hosting? There are hundreds of links into the site, by taking it down we effectively break the web according to Adaptive Path, Mike Arrington and David Parmet (guys I really respect). On an ironic sidenote, the Adaptive Path post titled “The Web is Fragile don’t Break it!” now shows a 404 error. I am not sure why they took it down, but I suspect it has to do with the veracity of the information they received. [...]

By: Chase Hicks

Chase Hicks — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 19:51:53 +0000

In this order…

I cried.

I laughed.

I cried again. Don’t break the web, its bad juju.

By: Scott Wilson

Scott Wilson — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 15:57:00 +0000

I think we understood it perfectly, and the point stands–if he was concerned about the long-term availability of the IP he was contributing, even if it was only a portion of it, he should have made arrangements to ensure continued control. As it was, apparently your company owned it, and he doesn’t have much pull over whether it stays up or not. It’s great that you decided to make it available again, but this is splashed all over the blogosphere as if you yanked down his work. But if he was an employee and there were no agreements to the contrary, then it was your work all along. If you want people to understand something, that should be it… otherwise the tarring and feathering is likely to continue.

The venue may be new, but this is an old story for anyone creating content… be clear who has the rights to it and make sure you retain control of it if that’s a priority for you in the long term.

By: Alexander Muse

Alexander Muse — Fri, 04 Aug 2006 02:29:48 +0000

Nik and Scott – I think you misunderstand the situation with your comment “A demonstration of the problem of building up your blog on a domain that somebody else owns. It has happen so many times, Beware.”

The Hurricane blog was a team effort, Brian was only one member of the team. I am not sure where you got the idea that it was “his” blog. Brian has always had his own personal blog at Like it Matters. His personal domains were always hosted on his own servers and he always paid for his own domain registration fees. Our company, who he worked for, owned the blog and the domain related to the Hurricane blog. Had it been “his” project I am sure he would have registered the domain name and hosted it on her personal servers.

I am not sure who started this meme – i.e. we were the hosting company – but it simply is not true. Our servers suffered several DOS attacks this afternoon and we can only assume someone has the wrong idea about our company. I hope someone will clear this up.

By: Scott Wilson

Scott Wilson — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:44:42 +0000

Nik is absolutely right–if you don’t have a contract, get one, or host important information yourself. So many people have gotten used to cheap or free service that they forget someone out there still has to manage or pay for it to be managed, and may have other priorities for the money or resources used to do so. If you aren’t providing those things, you have little room to complain if the person who does decides to pull them.

I don’t know the particulars in this case but it seems like it wasn’t a formal arrangement, as if it had been it would have been resolved with a quick fax of a contract or call to a lawyer; but the advice is important for anyone who has information they consider a priority on the web.

By: Brian Oberkirch

Brian Oberkirch — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:11:36 +0000

I’m really stoked that the blog is back up. Glad you guys decided to do the right thing. Thank you.

By: Nik Cubrilovic

Nik Cubrilovic — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 23:05:56 +0000

A demonstration of the problem of building up your blog on a domain that somebody else owns. It has happen so many times, Beware.

By: Weblogs Work: Social Media Consultants

Weblogs Work: Social Media Consultants — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:35:14 +0000

[...] Last month we wrote about our experience working on the Slidell Hurricane Disaster Blog in a post titled, “Looking Back: Hurricane Katrina Blogging.” The blog was in a serious state of disrepair having remained dormant with no new posts since April and thousands of comment and trackback spam links. We took down the blog assuming it had, “outlived its usefulness as a resource.” We were wrong. The emails, phone calls, blog posts and IMs kept coming in such as, “you have broken the internet!” and “you dishonor the dead!” and many other messages that we choose not to repeat. Even Mike Arrington got in on the action. [...]

By: Weblogs Work: Social Media Consultants

Weblogs Work: Social Media Consultants — Thu, 03 Aug 2006 22:35:14 +0000